


Genetic Drift

by Leftmyheartinthetardis



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Abandonment, Aged-Up Character(s), Family, Family Feels, Family Relationships - Freeform, Older AU, Other, non-phantom planet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-11-19 01:06:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11302572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leftmyheartinthetardis/pseuds/Leftmyheartinthetardis
Summary: While visiting home for spring break 21-year-old college student Danny Fenton finds himself face to face with a part of his life he had long since given up hope on after a knock comes at his window in the middle of the night.Danny, Dani, and seven years of silence.





	1. Night Visitors

Someone knocking at Danny Fenton’s window in the middle of the night was hardly ever a good thing. In fact, as Danny rolled out of bed at 2 am to investigate the source of the knocking, grumpy after being woken up from much-needed sleep, he decided someone (or, more often than not, some _thing_ ) knocking at his window in the middle of the night was never a good thing.

 _You could’ve gone to Florida or something, but nooo you just had to return to Amity for spring break,_ he grumbled, shuffling over to his window. It wasn’t like this never happened at school- it did. It just happened a lot less than it did in his hometown. With a sigh, he opened his window and stuck his head out to look around.

No one. There was no one there. Groaning he turned to go back to bed.

“Hey, cous’.”

Startled, Danny whipped around to find nothing other than a little girl (who really wasn’t much of a little girl anymore) with her head and arms propped up on the window ledge. He recognized her instantly.

“Dani? Wha-what?”

“Can I come in?” She asked, already making her way through the window.

“Um, what?” Danny stammered in reply.

With a thud, the girl climbed through the window and sat down on the floor. Almost immediately there was a flash of blue-white light and a different looking girl sat in her place.

“I- don’t…but…you…okay?” Danny asked, rushing over to her side, hardly able to form words.

Dani brushed him off with a wave, saying “Yeah. Great. Just need a second,” before closing her eyes and controlling her breath like someone in a yoga class.

Danny stared in disbelief at his younger cousin as she caught her breath. He could hardly believe she in front of him if he was being honest. The last time he’d seen her had been, what, 7 years ago? He had been 14 then, and he was 21 now which made her…18? Okay, that was weird. Her black hair had grown out and hung down near the middle of her back and her face was more angular, giving her a generally older look. But she also looked tired. There were dark circles under her eyes and the back of her hands were scratched and bruised, like she had spent her spare time punching sand.

“You guys got any water?”

“Uhhh…”

“Hello? Earth to Danny, you copy?”

Suddenly, Danny snapped as he processed what exactly had just happened. With an alarmed look on his face and his eyes ever so briefly flashing a bright green colour, he spoke. “Danielle. Downstairs, lab, _NOW_.”

Groaning with the effort, Dani stood up and faced her cousin, his hand pointing out the door to his room. “Geez, so much for a warm welcome,” she mumbled, limping past Danny. A moment later he followed her and the pair made the trek to the lab.

Danny didn’t speak a word as they walked down the stairs. There was so much swirling around in his head he feared any attempt to speak would cause it to all come out at once, very loudly. He knew something had to be wrong, really wrong, for Dani to show up like this. The last time she had shown up unexpectedly it was because she was dying- literally breaking down on a genetic level. After Danny had been able to stabilize her she flew off to her next great adventure, and he hadn’t heard from his clone since. Until 3 minutes ago, that is. Which most certainly meant something major was wrong. He could tell from the way she moved that she was hurt. Before she had transformed there were cuts and bruises on her arms and a nasty looking gash on her cheek the oozed green ectoplasm. When she had changed back they faded, but the cuts were still there, tinted a sickly green.

“Hold up,” She said, stopping suddenly, “Give me like, 20 seconds, kay?” Slowly, she sank to the floor, sitting on the bottom step of the main staircase. Taking very controlled yet somehow still ragged breaths, she placed her head between her knees, fighting the nearly overwhelming sense of vertigo that she had felt for the past few weeks _. You really fucked up this time_ , a small voice told her.

“Danielle? Dani? You alright there?” Danny asked.

Dani lifted her head to reply, looked up at her cousin, and fainted.

 

Great. This is just great, super awesome, Danny thought as he made his way towards the basement stairs. Dani was in his arms, still breathing but almost completely out. He should have figured something like this would happen sooner or later given the insanity that was his life. But he wasn’t ready for something like, or the mixed emotions he was currently feeling because of it. As he reached the bottom of the stairs he looked for somewhere to place his cousin and decided on his Dad’s old overstuffed office chair. Gently he set her down and went to find the first aid kit.

 

Dani woke up a few minutes later. Her surroundings were unfamiliar and standing above her was a boy with dark hair and blue eyes placing a cold compress on her forehead. Her cousin.

“There she is. You okay, Dani? Everything is safe, you just fainted. You’re in the Fenton lab. I’m going to figure out what’s going on, okay? But first you are going to be really sleepy for bit.”

Only somewhat processing what he cousin said, Dani nodded her head and fell asleep.

The next stretch of time was a blur for Dani. What she occasionally saw and heard meant nothing to her, so she slept again.

 

After giving Danielle the anesthetic, Danny picked her up and moved her again to one of the lab’s hospital beds. He never knew why exactly his family had them, but he was certainly grateful for them tonight.

His cousin’s condition worried him. A lot of things about his cousin worried him at the moment, but right now her stability took priority. It really was just like Plasmius to go and create a sentient clone without giving them the key component to their existence. It made him sick, yet he was not surprised.

It hadn’t taken him long to figure out Dani’s immediate problem. Her genetic code had gone unstable again. That much was obvious. After setting her down in the chair he had been covered in some kind of weird ectoplasm. She was literally dripping the stuff, melting down to it. It had happened before, but the two other times he’d seen it, it had been right after she used her powers. Now, she was just melting down as she sat there. It was bad. Really bad. To get better she needed a genetic sample from him, a working and complete genetic sample. They may have been clones, but they weren’t the same. As hard as he tried, Danny just couldn’t figure out why Danielle’s DNA had the stability issue. Clearly, his DNA wasn’t affected by his transformation or using his powers. There was just a flaw somewhere inside Dani’s code was really all he could guess.

After lying her down he collected everything he needed to make a stabilizer. She was injured and dehydrated too, and even though he didn’t want to put her under anesthetics, it was the only thing he could think of (short of an induced coma, which he had no idea how to do) to slow her destabilization. So a mix of his genetic code and some electrolytes was all it was going to be for now. The electrolyte mixes his parents had on hand. The genetic sample he had to collect himself. 

The DNA she needed was from the moment between when he was human and when he was a ghost. The normally split second in time where his appearance and abilities were altering, the moment when the infected ghost DNA took over from his living DNA, was what Dani needed. The best way to get that he’d learned was a blood draw. Or ectoplasm draw? Whatever it was (and he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to find out), he needed it.

Taking a deep breath, Danny picked up the syringe from the table in front of him. Yeah, he’d fixed himself, his friends, and even Jasmin up after more than a few ghostly mishaps, but taking blood was different. The syringe was huge, and the needle was too.

Trying hard to not think about what he was about to do, Danny took the needle and stabbed it into his forearm, wincing from the pain. He took one more breath and transformed.

It was, by all accounts, a slow transformation, with his focus divided between going ghost, pulling the plug on the syringe, and not yelling from the pain. But it was over soon enough, and there stood Danny Phantom, ghost-boy, superhero, and over-stressed college student, with a large, glowing, green liquid filled, syringe sticking out of his arm. Clenching his teeth, he pulled the syringe free and set it on the table. He was going to have one hell of a bruise to explain.

After mixing the stabilizing solution together he poured it into a drip bag and hooked Danielle up to the IV. About an hour had passed, he realized, and she should be waking up within a half hour. Knowing he’d done all he could for the time being, Danny pulled up a chair and sat down. It was 2:00 am.


	2. Symptoms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danni wakes up, and Danny isn't happy.

When she finally woke up, Danielle didn’t panic like she’s seen people in movies and on TV do. Instead, she just looked around, taking in her surroundings through the haze the drugs had created in her mind. She vaguely recognized her location, but she couldn’t firmly grasp her situation until a distantly familiar voice began speaking to her.

“The re-stabilization process seems to be holding. You were worse off than the last time so it may take your body a greater amount of time to acclimate. Your vitals are on the rebound and your previously visible ecto-wounds appear to have greatly faded. I’d recommend you remain in bed to ensure the mixture is properly absorbed. No one should be down here for the next 48 hours due to a ghost hunters’ convention in Milwaukie. The house is empty.”

Across from her at the foot of the bed stood Danny. Danielle took in the sight of her cousin now having shaken the clouded feeling that previously enveloped her brain. He was taller now and much more muscular. His jaw was firm, giving his face a sculpted look. His hair was the same black colour but had grown out quite a bit. She hadn’t realized it at first because it was pulled back into a low pony tail. His eyes were the same, a piercing blue, but beneath his eyes was different. He was tired.

Danielle felt ashamed all the sudden. Looking into her cousin's eyes was in many ways like looking into her own. She could see he was upset and tired. There was no warmth in his eyes or excitement, only a tension. She knew then that she had messed up. She had really, really, messed up.

“Thank you, Danny,” She began, her voice soft and gaze averted. She found herself unable to face him all of the sudden, as if she had been crushed under the weight he carried in his eyes. “Also,” she took a deep breath, “I’m sorry.”

Dani didn’t know exactly what she was trying to convey with that apology. It was worthless but at the same time trying to cover everything that had or may have happened over the past 7 years. She said it because she had to say something, because now that they were face to face she could not continue saying nothing.

As if unable to hear her, Danny turned and went to set a clipboard over on the counter.

“Danny?” She asked softly

“What the hell, Dani?” He asked softly.

“What?”

Danielle jumped as a loud thud rang out. Danny, his eyes glowing a bright and unnatural green, slammed his hands down on the counter and whipped around to face his younger cousin. “WHAT. THE. HELL.”

And in that moment, Dani had never been more terrified of her cousin.

 

“Seven years, Danielle. Seven fucking years!”

“I…I’m…I just…”

“No!” Danny cut her off and grabbed the back of the chair he had been sitting in, gripping so hard his knuckles turned white. “Do you honestly think you can just fly off to god knows where to do god knows what and just not come back and expect everything to be okay?? Did you think no one would look for you or worry about you? So a few months pass, great, normal. But then a year, two years. NOTHING. Not a damn word about you or where you went or if you were even alive! SORRY DOESN’T CUT IT.”

Danny’s hands gripped the metal foot board at the end of the hospital bed so hard they looked white. His entire body now glowed, radiating an unnatural light that matched the glow of his eyes.

“Danny…I…I think,” Danielle stammered, “I think you need to calm down, Danny. Please.”

Danny released his grip on the hospital bed and stormed to the sink on the other side of the room. Splashing water on his face and taking a deep breath, Danny began to calm. Danielle sighed as the green aura around her cousin faded. When he turned back his eyes were their familiar ice blue once again.

“Dani, why are you here?” Danny asked, his tone revealing that although no longer glowing there was still angry.

“I need help.”

“Of course you do. That’s what everyone comes here for, isn’t it? Ghosts, humans. Doesn’t matter. Everybody needs something from the Fentons.”

“No. Just you. Danny, something is happening to me. I think…I think that this is it. I think I am dying.”

“Why come here?”

“Because I have no idea what is going to happen and frankly I am terrified.”

“Because you need my help?”

“Yes. That too. I figured there were only two people who might be able to help me, and I am never going back to Vlad.”

“Well, okay then. All your vitals are normal and you’re no longer literally decomposing. I gave you a stabilization mixture via IV so you’re fine on that end. So what seems to be the problem?”

Carefully, Danielle pulled back the covers a stepped out of bed. She wore only a hospital gown over her underwear and realized that Danny must have put it on her while she was passed out. She shivered slightly as her feet hit the cold concrete floor, but at the same time she was relieved that she could even still feel the cold. After a moment she took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she was surrounded by a blue-white light.

Danny’s face grew concerned as he looked over the ghost girl now standing in front of him. She had grown up, but he had already noticed that. What he noticed now shocked him even more, despite thinking that was impossible for tonight.

“What the…” Danny wondered as he walked closer to his cousin.

He noticed it first on her exposed stomach. Much like himself, she had not changed what she wore as a ghost. She still had the crop top revealing what seemed to be some sort of strange rash growing across her skin. It didn’t look like any rash he had ever seen before, though. It was as if someone had taken a circuit board from an overly complex computer and grafted the line pattern into her skin where it stood out bright green.

“May I?” Danny asked, gesturing to the markings.

“Go for it. I’ve got nothing to lose at this point.” Danielle said.

Carefully Danny reached out and touched the rash, and pulled his hand away.

“How did that feel?” He asked.

Danielle just shrugged in response.

“Did it hurt, was it a sharp pain, does it itch at all?”

“Danny, I don’t know. I don’t _feel_ anything!”

“What?”

“Anywhere these markings spread, I don’t feel a thing.”

Danny looked over his cousin. The rash was all over her in different places and patches. There was some on her neck and even some visible through her clothes on her shoulder and thighs. He had never seen anything like it on a human or a ghost. He didn’t even know what it was.

“And, there’s, um, there’s more, Danny. More symptoms or whatever.”

“Like what?” Danny asked, concerned yet distracted by something about his clone that he just couldn’t put his finger on.

“It happens when I try and use more of my powers. It's like a TV signal getting scrambled or something. Like this.”

Danny watched as his cousin formed a sphere of ecto-energy, or at least tried to. I wasn’t a nice even sphere- it crackled and the light around it glowed unevenly. Then, without warning, Dani changed. Her form flickered and crackled, both her skin and the ball of ecto-energy turning a sickly green with patches and streaks of black void. Danielle let the ecto-energy dissipate and reached up to wipe her nose. The back of her hand came away streaked with ectoplasm. She was bleeding and knew that if she were to try and summon energy like that again, she wouldn’t just bleed- she would dissolve.

“I can’t do that again,” She said, wiping her nose once more. “At least not for a while.”

Dani was shaking, trembling, and occasionally flickering- her form changing colors, the mysterious rash occasionally advancing over her flesh. There was dried ectoplasm under her nose and coming from her ear.

“Oh, Danni. I am so, so, sorry.”

Danni walked over to sit on the side of the bed once again. “Do you have any idea what could be wrong with me?” She asked.

“Honestly? I have no idea,” Danny replied, sitting down next to her. “I have never seen or experienced anything like this.”

“Can you fix me?”

Danny gave his cousin a look before responding. “Can I? I don’t know if I can, but I’m damn well going to try. Seven years missing or not, you’re still family.”


	3. The Frog Analogy

Danny sighed and pulled the rubber band out of his hair, shaking his head so that it fell in a curtain around his face. I was different, seeing her cousin look like this. It was…unsettling.

“Your hair,” Danni said, “It looks so different long. You look almost like… well, like Vlad.”

“Ha,” Danny laughed, “Now you sound like my parents. They don’t even know the half of it.”

“What do you mean?”

Standing up, Danny turned to look at his cousin before closing his eyes and being enveloped in a flash of white-blue light.

In response, Dani could do little more than stare at being in front of her, none other than Amity Park’s own Danny Phantom. Except… except it wasn’t the Danny Phantom she remembered- the scrawny kid in a black FentonSuit with pale skin and slightly shaggy white hair. No. The ghost that stood in front of her was a different beast entirely. His outfit was the same, but that was it. Otherwise, he bore little resemblance to the kid she remembered. He had bulked up, for starters. His arms and chest were more muscular and defined, like something out of a comic book. But that wasn’t what shook her the most. It was his face, his skin. He was no longer just pale, instead, his skin had taken on an eerie blue-green undertone, faint but still present. He smiled at her, his teeth perfectly white and straight but still… wrong. Pointed, some of them, she realized. Less like teeth and more like fangs. And barely visible beneath his hair, which seemed to at times move and glow as if contained a flame, the sharply pointed tip of his ear. Dani observed him for a second until something in her snapped.

“Get away from me. Stay back, I’m serious!” She shouted at her cousin. “Don’t come any closer!”

“Danielle, I-”

“Shut the hell up, and get back!”

Clenching her fists and closing her eyes, Dani began to hyperventilate. “No, no, no, no…” she muttered, shaking her head back and forth, clenching and unclenching her fists. 

Unsure of what to do, Danny changed back but stood where he was.

“Dani,” he said, “It's okay. I am not going to hurt you. You are safe here. Just breathe, okay? Breath.” Slowly, he advanced towards her, softly repeating himself. After about five minutes, his cousin calmed down.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked.

Dani just shook her head no in response.

“Let me know if you do, okay?” Worried and slightly puzzled he asked, “Would it be best if I just didn’t transform around you for now?”

Dani took a deep breath in and looked up. “No,” she said, “No, I just…I think I just got caught off guard is all. You just look so much like…well, you know, like Vlad now. I didn’t expect it.”

“I understand”

“Do you think you could transform one more time, just so I could maybe get used to it?”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Danielle?”

“Yes.”

Trusting his cousin’s judgment, Danny took a step back and transformed once again. Taking a deep breath, Dani looked him over. He did look similar to Vlad now, but also very different in some ways. His eyes were brighter, kinder. His skin looked more human and his hair more gentle and free flowing. It was almost as if he was what Vlad could have been.

“You okay, kid?”

“Yeah, I think I will be. I guess I was just surprised.”

“You and more both.”

“What happened?” Dani asked.

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time”

Sighing, Danny grabbed the chair that was at the foot of the and flipped it around to sit straddling the back and facing Dani.

“You know that story or whatever about how if you put a frog in boiling water it will jump out, but if you put a frog in cool water and slowly heat it, it won’t realize it’s being boiled alive?

“Well, that story is horse crap. Have you ever tried getting a frog to stay in once place? Not going to work. But the idea behind the story- the philosophy there- has truth to it- the idea that if things get worse slowly you won't notice them until you're waist deep in boiling water. And I guess in a way that is what happened to me.

“It was about three years ago now. I had, naturally, made a new enemy inside the ghost-zone. Their name was-is- Cain. And they’re an assassin, a really, really, good assassin. Anyways, I was at school. We were out on the football field, rehearsing for graduation- practicing lining up and walking to our seats when out of nowhere Cain shows up. No warning, no ghost-sense, nothing. I guess I was just exhausted, hadn’t been taking care of myself, just generally “off” you know? It was a beautiful day in late May, in three days we would all be graduated, and then… then there’s Cain. So, I do what I’ve always done- slip away and transform and next thing you know everybody is screaming in fear at this unfamiliar ghost and yelling in excitement at the arrival of Amity Park’s finest. Just your everyday chaos. Normal Casper High stuff. And then Cain and I, well we start to get into it…”

 

* * *

 

 

“Cain! It’s been a couple months! I was beginning to think you got scared away!” Danny taunted as he arrived on the chaotic scene of Casper High’s graduation practice.

“Danny Phantom,” Cain growled in response.

“Still a ghost of few words, huh? Well, don’t worry, I’ve got plenty for both of us. Including these two- ‘Go’ and ‘Away!’

Danny punctuated his words with a blast of ecto-energy, only for it to hit the goal posts after being dodged by Cain. In response, he was met with blasters firing a sickly pink energy.

“New toys!” He piped, “Can’t say that I’m a fan.”

Down on the field Danny’s long time teacher Mr. Lancer began shuffling students off of the field and out of harms way.

“Keep it moving. Under the bleachers, to the gym. Don’t panic but move fast!”

Much of the senior class pushed and shoved to get through the bleachers and to the gym. They had all grown up in Amity and they knew how dangerous it could get when spirits were involved.

Cain, however, wasn’t focused on them. No, Cain’s soul focus was the destruction of Danny Phantom. Danny flew over Cain’s head, hitting them in the back being hit by fire from one of the malicious looking blasters. The force was incredible, blasting Danny into the bleachers behind him and leaving a sizable dent.  Screams could be heard from beneath him as the students ran beneath the now disfigured and creaking metal structure. Grunting with effort and grinding his teeth in pain, Danny sat up just in time to see Cain draw a new blaster from a holster on their back. Smiling wickedly, Cain pointed the blaster at Danny.

“Go Away, Danny Phantom.”

Danny hardly had time to generate a shield before the blast hit with a force like nothing he had ever encountered. He woke up in the hospital a few hours later having already transformed back into Danny Fenton. He was surrounded by his family. Even Jasmin was there.

“Oh, my goodness, Danny,” His mom said, wrapping him a hug, “Please, don’t scare us like that again. We got there as fast as we could, but…”

“But by the time we got there it was too late,” His father continued. “That damn Phantom had already made a disaster of the situation.”

“We’re just glad you’re safe,” His mom said, cutting off his dad.

“What happened?” Danny asked, attempting to take in the people that surrounded him, despite his brain being a bit more than fuzzy.

“Don’t you remember? Cain hit the bleachers. Or maybe Phantom did. We don’t know. The magnitude of the blast deformed the steel. The supports twisted and melted. It was a complete structural collapse. They found you, Danny, trapped under them. Somehow you were safe in a little pocket as if it collapsed around you. I mean, look at you! You’re barely hurt! When we got there it was all but over. We were just in time to see the dust settle. No sign of Phantom or the other ghost, but there are pictures. We know for sure it was them.”

“And they’re going to pay for it,” Jack added, a dark expression crossing his usually happy face.

“Pay for what, Dad? Me almost getting hurt? New bleachers?”

Suddenly, the mood around him changed. Danny could have sworn he heard his mother sniffle. After a moment, Jasmine spoke up.

“Danny,” Jasmine said, “There’s something you need to know.”

“Jaz, not now.” Their father interjected.

“No, Dad! Danny deserves to know, and he deserves to hear it directly.” Jasmine took a deep breath before continuing, “Danny…when the bleachers collapsed, almost everyone was clear of them, except you and Kwan. Nobody knows why the two of you weren’t clear of the bleachers yet, just that they were too damaged to stand. Danny, I am so, so, sorry, but Kwan didn’t make it out. He was gone before the paramedics got there. I’m sorry.

The floor fell out from under Danny. It was like he was spiraling through nothing, no sense of up or down, no sense of direction. Something had to be wrong. Kwan? Dead? No, he must have misheard her. Kwan didn’t die. He just couldn’t have.

“Danny, are you okay?” His mother asked.

All he could do was nod his head in response.

Later that evening he was discharged from the hospital. The rest of his time there and his evening at home fluctuated between physical pain and the crushing memory of Jasmin’s words. _Kwan didn’t make it out._

He still didn’t believe. And he refused to until the next morning when sitting down to eat his breakfast he saw the front page of the _Amity Park Daily News._

 

**One Dead in Casper High Ghost Attack**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soo....sorry I don't really have an update schedule per-say, but I swear, this is one of my top priority stories!  
> Thank you so much for reading! Feel free to comment anything, especially concrit or illegible keyboard smashes


	4. The Power of Grief

_…identified as senior football player Kwan Rhee…committed to play at Notre Dame…Survived by his mother, father, and two younger siblings…_

 

As hard as it was Danny couldn’t bring himself to stop reading the article and playing the headline over and over in his head over the next day.

Three days later Danny found himself standing in a long line, dressed in a suit that had grown too small and surrounded by people too young to look so devastated. It was Kwan’s wake. Almost everyone from school had shown up.

Slowly the line crept into the room where the casket lay surrounded by flowers and boards containing pictures from every stage of his too short life. When Danny reached the front of the line he stood face to face with Kwan’s parents. With tears in his eyes and hands balled into fists he shakily offered his condolences before placing a single hand on the closed casket, all the while a single sentence screamed in his brain- This is my fault.

Danny didn’t stay for long at the wake.

He couldn’t. He would have gone insane, completely broken down. So, he ran. He ran and neither knew nor cared where. Bolted from the wake with tears streaming down his face. Nobody questioned it when they saw the Fenton boy leaving the wake. Sure, the two were never truly friends, but the same accident that merely bruised Danny killed Kwan. As he left the wake he couldn’t escape the constant replaying of the fatal battle in his mind, one specific detail crushing him a bit more every time.

Danny had fought Cain with his back to the bleachers. It was his fault. Every shot Cain took, every blast that Danny evaded, hit the bleachers his friends were using to escape to safety. He killed Kwan.

If I had just moved.

If I had just changed his position.

If I had just- NO.

 

* * *

“NO!”

It was a desperate yell, an aggravated yell, directed at Danny’s own thoughts and absorbed by the empty Fenton lab.

“Argghhhh!”

* * *

 

“Back the hell off!” Danny yelled, hitting a couple of ectopusses with an energy blast. He needed to get away from it all. His family. His friends. The school. The mourners. The Ghost Zone could get him away from all of that. And after he found himself yelling into an empty lab after running away from the wake, that’s where he went.

The Ghost Zone was big- infinitely so. Big enough that Danny could just fly and fly and continue trying to out-run his guilt. Eventually, he collapsed on some floating island deep in the Ghost Zone. He had never been there before, but he didn’t care, as long as he could sleep.

He woke up not knowing how long he’d been out, or where he was. He didn’t particularly care.  He was angry. Just angry.

At himself.

At Cain.

Even at Kwan for being under the damn bleachers.

Flying off the island and defiantly turning towards it, Danny let out a yell. A long, powerful wail, like a tormented, ancient, banshee. The island shook as it was hit by the force of the wail and crumbled into dust as Danny floated in the dark nothingness of the Ghost Zone.

 

* * *

 

Danny rubbed his face with his hands and sighed. He didn’t like telling this story. It had been three years but every time he told it it was as if it had happened yesterday. But he knew he couldn’t just leave Dani with part of the story, so he continued.

“You know how time works differently in the Ghost Zone?” He asked

Dani nodded in response.

“Yeah, well, I don’t know how long I was in there, just floating surrounded by nothing and filed with numbness. I know some point after that first day Sam and Jasmine came and found me in the Speeder and brought me back home, but it’s all hazy like I wasn’t even really living it. After that, I just…went back in, no intention of going out, deeper and deeper, not really going anywhere but away. I was angry. I was violent. I spent more time in my ghost form than ever before and let's hope God had mercy on any spirit that got in my way because I sure as hell didn’t. I hated ghosts, hated spirits, and finally…I just snapped.

 

The inhabitants of the small ghost island known as Glenn 9 had heard recent rumors and stories of the Rampaging ghost- a powerful and unfamiliar spirit that had been wreaking havoc throughout the deep regions of the Ghost Zone. But Glenn 9 was small, unimportant, its inhabitants' nothing more than the spirits of farmers and growers maintaining a shadow of life in the realm of death. The Rampaging ghost didn’t care. He was twisted and cruel and wanted nothing more than the destruction of the Ghost Zone, which is why when his rage reached the island of Glenn 9 the spirits there knew it was hopeless. No one tried to stop him as he destroyed the outer stretches of the island and grew progressively closer to town, annihilating store fronts and homes. His rampage led him to the edge of town where a school stood, filled with the citizens and kids of Glenn 9. A few kids looked out the window as they hid there, sheltered-in-place, quiet as could be, as they tried to avoid the attention ghost destroying their town.

Outside, the Rampaging ghost stood facing the school, his face a mask of fury. He stood for a moment, collecting himself, before opening his mouth and unleashing his dreaded wail. Students cried and huddled together and their very cores shook along with the building. Debris started to fall and cracks appeared in the ceiling, and in one of the classrooms a young ghost let out a scream as they prepared for the world to collapse around them.

And then silence.

The wail had cut off almost as quick as it had started as the Rampaging ghost collapsed, disappearing in a flash of light. Where he had been standing stood a different ghost- the notorious Vlad Plasmius, holding a collapsed teenage boy in his arms.

 

Danny woke in a panic and tried to jump to his feet.

He couldn’t, he quickly realized. He was restrained, strapped to some sort of examination table somewhere.

“Hey!” he yelled, not seeing anyone, “What the hell is this? Let me go!”

Danny strained against the straps holding him down “HEY!”

“Daniel, I need for you to calm down. You are alright.”

“WHOEVER THE HELL YOU ARE, LET ME GO!”

“Daniel, you know exactly who I am. Now I need you to stop thrashing around and listen to me!”

At once Danny stopped. He knew that voice, distinguished yet cold and hard. Hearing it set off alarm bells in his head as he realized the situation he was in was far worse than he had thought.

He wasn’t just strapped down to an exam table in some strange lab. No, he was strapped to an exam table in the lab of none other than one of his oldest enemies.

“Vlad?!”

“Daniel, I swear on my own grave I am not going to hurt you.” Said Vlad, stepping out of the shadows at the far end of his lab.

“Why don’t I believe you?” Danny spat back.

“Because you are, to a degree, smart,” Vlad replied. Danny tried to get in some sort of retort, only to find himself cut off. “Daniel, do you know why you are here?”

“I dunno, maybe because some deranged fruit-loop kidnapped me?”  
“No, Daniel, you are here because some “deranged fruit-loop” stopped you. Or, should I say, stopped the ghost that has destroyed more than 20 islands in the Ghost Zone and displaced or destroyed over 400 spirits.”

“What do you mean?”  
“What do I mean? I mean you, young man, the self-proclaimed “Good Guy” has rampaged and caused so much destruction that out of desperation the spirits of the Ghost Zone came to me, the proclaimed “Bad Guy”, to go after you with a prototype ghost destabilizer and stop you!”

Vlad stood now at the foot of the exam table, looking down at Danny with a stare so hard it could slice through cement. In his hands, he held an old-fashioned silver backed hand mirror. Danny sat in stunned silence thinking over what Vlad had just said.

“You need to be brought back to reality, boy. Back under control.” Tears welled up in Danny’s eyes and his face grew hot as he began to process what Vlad had said.

“No…,” he said. “There’s no…no way I would do something like that. I’m...I’m the good guy! I don’t hurt people, I help them!”

“Maybe you are, but the beings you displaced, the ones you destroyed? They are not people. They are ghosts. As are you. And ghosts get fixated on things. Obsessions. Things that warp and twist their mind and change them.”

“No. No, I don’t have a fixation or an obsession or whatever. You’re wrong!” Danny said, his voice going from a whisper to a yell as he defended himself.

“It's grief, Daniel. Grief and all that comes with it. It got to you. It fixated you. It changed you.”

“No! You have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“I don’t? Well then, Daniel Fenton, tell me why the “Good Guy” such as yourself would rampage through the deepest parts of the Ghost Zone? Why would he run from his home town and family without notice? Why would he destroy a school full of young spirits that had never done any one harm?

Vlad was yelling now, his stare fixed on Danny and his shoulders squared. He took a deep breath and continued speaking in a normal tone. “Because he was grieving. Because grief makes people angry and depressed and despite to the point where they do things they wouldn’t normally do. Do you remember anything from your little rampage, Daniel? Do you see how much grief has affected you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Danny said softly, refusing to make eye contact with Vlad.

“No? Well then,” Vlad began to move to the side of the examination table. Reaching beneath it he elevated the half where Danny’s head lay so that he was sitting up before releasing the straps binding his arms. Holding the silver hand mirror out to Danny, he finished his thought.

“I think you should see for yourself.”

Danny looked into the mirror. The face staring back at him was his own, but barely. More of a shell than anything else. His eyes were dull and lined with dark circles and his hair was greasy and overgrown.

“Look at all of yourself, Daniel,” Vlad instructed.

Taking a deep breath in and letting it out slowly, Danny transformed, nearly dropping the mirror as he looked into it. The face the stared back at him was far from familiar.

 

* * *

 

“Weren’t you, like, scared Vlad was going to do something to you?” Dani asked, looking slightly confused.

“Honestly, Dani? No. I mean, I knew it was possible but at that point I just…didn’t care. There was nothing in me left to care. Vlad could have done whatever he wanted to me and I…” Danny took a shaky breath, “I would have just accepted it.”

“Oh,” Dani replied. “Okay. So, you looked in the mirror and then what?”

“I saw myself. I saw what I had become, the way the grief had twisted me, changed me. As far as Sam, Tucker, and I can tell, between the extreme emotional distress and the extended time spent transformed within the Ghost Zone my form somehow shifted. It was literally the grief and the things that it drove me to do that changed me.”

“What happened after?”

“Vlad undid the rest of the restraints. Then he left, and it was just me. Face to face with what I’d become. Apparently, he knew that was worse than anything he could do to me. So, I left. Went home where I’d apparently been gone over three weeks at some super isolated inpatient care center, courtesy of Vlad. He’d fed my parents some BS story and they believed him, because why the hell not. I’d missed the funeral, missed graduation.  No one really acknowledged that I’d be gone because that’s just not something people do when a kid “disappears” to an inpatient treatment center for a month. I found out later that Sam, Tucker, and Jasmin had been searching for me to the point of exhaustion until they all received mysterious messages telling them to stop, that the situation was being handled by someone and that their involvement would likely get them killed.  Then after about two days at home, I found a business card on my desk for a therapist who dealt with grief and depression. Still have no idea who put it there. Could have been Vlad for all I know. But the sessions were good and, with time, things got back to normal. Or as normal as they could. The physical changes never reversed. I guess it’s just something that will always be. A reminder I will always have.”

“Reminder of what?”

“The power of grief.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You ever start a sub-story that you realize could really be its own fic?  
> Yeah.

**Author's Note:**

> More to come, and artwork too!  
> Feel free to like and comment any thoughts or concrit you have!!  
> Find me on Tumblr @gaygrinningghosts


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